In recent experiments [M. Dubois, B. Demé, T. Gulik-Krzywicki, J.-C. Dedieu, C. Vautrin, S. Désert, E. Perez, and T. Zemb, Nature (London) 411, 672 (2001)] the spontaneous formation of hollow bilayer vesicles with polyhedral symmetry has been observed. On the basis of the experimental phenomenology it was suggested [M. Dubois, V. Lizunov, A. Meister, T. Gulik-Krzywicki, J. M. Verbavatz, E. Pere...

Although there are already many efforts to investigate the electronic structures of twisted bilayer graphene, a definitive conclusion has not yet been reached. In particular, it is still a controversial issue whether a tunable electrical (or transport) bandgap exists in twisted bilayer graphene film until now. Herein, for the first time, it has been demonstrated that a tunable electrical bandga...

Unilamellar vesicles or "liposomes" are commonly used as simple cell models and as drug delivery vehicles. A major limitation of unilamellar liposomes in these applications has been premature contents release in physiological environments. This premature release is likely due to enzyme degradation or protein insertion into the liposome membrane, which significantly increases the bilayer permeab...

Second harmonic generation (SHG) was used to study both the adsorption of malachite green (MG), a positively charged organic dye, onto liposomes of different lipid compositions, and the transport kinetics of MG across the liposome bilayer in real time. We found that the dye adsorption increased linearly with the fraction of negatively charged lipids in the bilayer. Similarly, the transport rate...

Polyunsaturated lipids are an essential component of biological membranes, influencing order and dynamics of lipids, protein-lipid interaction, and membrane transport properties. To gain an atomic level picture of the impact of polyunsaturation on membrane properties, quantum mechanical (QM) and empirical force field based calculations have been undertaken. The QM calculations of the torsional ...

By virtue of the strength of hydrophobic interactions and the malleability of phospholipid acyl chains, membrane lipids become one of the important glues of life. The liquid-crystalline organization of the bilayer component of biological membranes enables the membranes to be effective, cohesive, and yet flexible, barriers separating two fluid compartments. Integral membrane proteins are imbedde...

Molecular dynamics simulations of two monounsaturated phosphatidylcholine (PC) bilayers made of 1-palmitoyl-2-oleoyl-PC (POPC; cis-unsaturated) and 1-palmitoyl-2-elaidoyl-PC (PEPC; trans-unsaturated) were carried out to investigate the effect of a double bond in the PC beta-chain and its conformation on the bilayer core. Four nanosecond trajectories were used for analyses. A fully saturated 1,2...

We study the localized magnetic states of an impurity in biased bilayer and trilayer graphene. It is found that the magnetic boundary for bilayer and trilayer graphene shows mixed features of Dirac and conventional fermions. For zero gate bias, as the impurity energy approaches the Dirac point, the impurity magnetization region diminishes for bilayer and trilayer graphene. When a gate bias is a...

In this work, we demonstrate a novel carrier transporting combination made of tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanomaterials and Cs2CO3/PCBM buffer bilayer for the fabrication of perovskite solar cells (PSCs). Two different types of WO3, including nanoparticles and nanorods, were prepared by sol-gel process and hydrothermal method, respectively. Cs2CO3/PCBM buffer bilayer was inserted between WO3 and pe...